Victoria Sorocean was taken into custody by ICE. (Photo: X)
A Moldovan woman convicted of murder has been arrested in Los Angeles after fleeing her home country to avoid serving a prison sentence, US officials have said.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed that Victoria Sorocean was taken into custody on November 4 by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Authorities said she had been convicted in 2013 in Moldova of premeditated murder committed with “exceptional cruelty”.
According to DHS, Sorocean and an accomplice tortured their victim inside an apartment in Chisinau, beating the person with a stick and electrical cable before throwing them out of a ninth-floor window. She was sentenced to 17 years in prison but fled the country before serving her term.
Sorocean was first detained by ICE in January 2020 under the Trump administration but later filed several appeals and asylum claims to delay her removal, officials said. She was released in 2022 under the Biden administration.
In a statement, DHS said the case illustrated “the failures of the previous administration” in allowing violent offenders to remain in the country.
“It shocks the conscience that the Biden administration released into America a cruel, violent illegal alien who tortured a human being, beat them with an electrical cable and a stick and then threw her victim from a ninth-floor window,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
“These are the types of barbaric criminal illegal aliens ICE is targeting every single day. Seventy percent of all ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the US,” she added.
McLaughlin said that under President Donald Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem, “the world’s criminals are no longer welcome in the US.”
DHS said Sorocean remains in ICE custody pending deportation proceedings.